To the Common Reader By Virginia Woolf

by thecustomhouse

One of my best friends introduced me to this essay. It’s so refreshing and crisp, like Montaigne’s essays. I want to read all the Virginia Woolf I can get my hands on this summer. She seems to cultivate the mind with such grace and delicacy.

On knowing one’s self: “Other people may evade us, but our own features are almost too familiar. Let us begin. And then, when we attempt the task, the pen falls from our fingers; it is a matter of profound, mysterious, and overwhelming difficulty.”